Symbolic Capital and the Performativity of Authorship

215 Pages·2017·2.95 MB·English

University of Nebraska - Lincoln
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Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research:
English, Department of
Department of English
Spring 4-20-2013
Symbolic Capital and the Performativity of
Authorship: The Construction and
Commodification of the Nineteenth-Century
Authorial Celebrity
Whitney Helms
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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SYMBOLIC CAPITAL AND THE PERFORMATIVITY OF AUTHORSHIP:
THE CONSTRUCTION AND COMMODIFICATION OF THE NINETEENTH-
CENTURY AUTHORIAL CELEBRITY

by

Whitney Helms

A DISSERTATION

Presented to the Faculty of
The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska
In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements
For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Major: English

Under the Supervision of Professor Laura M. White

Lincoln, Nebraska
May, 2013
SYMBOLIC CAPITAL AND THE PERFORMATIVITY OF AUTHORSHIP:
THE CONSTRUCTION AND COMMODIFICATION OF THE NINETEENTH-
CENTURY AUTHORIAL CELEBRITY
Whitney Helms, Ph.D.
University of Nebraska, 2013
Adviser: Laura M. White
Victorian and Antebellum writers were the first literary figures to construct and
perform their authorship within the sphere of celebrity. Unlike their Romantic
predecessors who endured fame as an unexpected consequence of their popularity, the
Victorians and their contemporaries understood celebrity as a condition of authorship.
This dissertation takes as its subject the origins and development of symbolic power for
authors as it was expressed in the trappings of celebrity and mass culture and argues that
authorship became no longer strictly a profession of writing, but rather a performative
endeavor that could be presented through diverse commercial markets. Investigating the
changing conditions of the production and consumption of literature, this study contends
that the public enterprises in which authorship was now being performed were not cheap
acts of mass entertainment, as many would claim, but were in fact new forms of cultural
capital and legitimate literary labor. Focusing on Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Wilkie Collins, and Oscar Wilde, four of the greatest nineteenth-century authorial
celebrities, this work traces the historical growth of celebrity culture within the authorial
profession from the inception of the Victorian and Antebellum periods to the fin de
siècle. In doing so, it seeks to understand how each of these writers effectively reconciled
publicity and self-commodification with respectability and authorial legitimacy.
Incorporating cultural studies, new historicism, gender studies, and the discourse of the
recently emerging study of celebrity culture, each chapter is a microhistory that focuses
on the respective promotional tours of these authors. Because the tours offered Dickens,
Stowe, Collins, and Wilde with a new medium in which to perform their authorial role,
they illustrate the ways in which notions of authorship and literary labor were being
reconceived in popular culture. Specifically, they show how celebrity and visibility
played increasingly major roles in the public reception of these writers’ work within a
mass market. Together, the chapters of this dissertation offer detailed discussions on four
canonical writers while also providing an analysis of the larger structural, cultural, and
social forces that helped to develop and sustain the nineteenth-century authorial celebrity
within the literary realm.
iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation was written under the guidance, support, and encouragement of many
professors, colleagues, friends, and loved ones. I extend my gratitude to Laura White,
Stephen C. Behrendt, Peter J. Capuano, and Ken Winkle, for encouraging and
challenging me, and for always treating my research and ideas with enthusiasm and
respect. Thank you, Laura, for offering me invaluable experiences, such as opportunities
to participate in faculty seminars and committee searches, both of which informed this
project.

I am especially grateful to Kathy Johnson, whose generosity is as great as her expertise.
Her personal support truly made it possible for me to finish this project. Among the many
friends who helped me along the way, I would like to thank Melissa, with whom I had
many cathartic conversations about editing, research, and graduate school. Thank you,
Melissa, not only for the support that you gave me throughout the years, but also for your
friendship.

Cooper and Zach, you are my two most beloved friends, and your presence, comfort, and
friendship are immeasurable to me. I would not have made it through the years without
you two. Sitting outside in the sun, drinking coffee, and writing my dissertation with
Zach by my side will always be one of my happiest memories. I am especially grateful
for the many walks we would take mid-day in order to recharge, rethink, and simply
enjoy.

To my parents, Janice and Terry Helms, and to my brother, Preston Helms, I am thankful
for your support every step of the way. Thank you, Preston, for encouraging me during
the writing of my last chapter. What you do in life is far more challenging and difficult
than anything I will ever achieve, and so I thank you for always treating my PhD as
though it were an accomplishment worth celebrating. Thank you, mom, for the many
conversations over the years and for being my greatest champion. Your humor and
positivity—even in the most difficult times—inspire me to be better in every possible
way. Dad, I am incredibly grateful to you for never giving up on me. Thank you for your
words of encouragement and for the moral and financial support that you have always
offered me. I am grateful, too, for our friendship. I hope that I have made you all proud.

Finally, this project would not have been possible without Donovan Kosters, whose
patience and encouragement never wavered, even in the bleakest of circumstances. Thank
you, Donovan, for treating this dissertation as though it were your own. Thank you for
supporting me spiritually, emotionally, and financially every minute of every day. I am
most grateful for the enthusiasm and humor with which you treat life, and for showing
me what it means to be happy. You are my best and greatest friend—always. To you I
dedicate this project.
v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations………………..vi

Introduction…………………..…..1-15

Chapter 1………………………....16-55
Performing Authorship in the Celebrity Sphere: Dickens and the Reading Tours

Chapter 2………………………....56-102
The (Authorial Celebrity) Woman Question: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
(Domestic, Feminine) Celebrity

Chapter 3………………………....103-147
Writing in the Name of ‘King Public’: The Rise and Fall of Wilkie Collins’s
Sensational Celebrity

Chapter 4………………………....148-193
Oscar Wilde’s Vexed Celebrity: Performing, Commodifying, and Reinventing
the Self in Popular Culture

Works Cited……………………...194-207
vi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1………..64
Image of Caroline Norton [from Fraser’s Magazine 3 (March 1831)]

Figure 2..………70
Image of Harriet Martineau [from Fraser’s Magazine 8 (November 1833)]

Figure 3………..125
“Caricature Portraits of Eminent Public Men.” [from Once A Week (February 1872)]
Figure 4………..132
“The Lyceum Committeeman’s Dream.” [from Harper’s Weekly (1873)]

Figures 5……….143
Photograph of Wilkie Collins [from Napoleon Sarony (March 1874)]

Figure 6………...143
Photograph of Wilkie Collins [from Napoleon Sarony (March 1874)]
Figure 7………...154
Wilde at Oxford. [from the Oscar Wilde Collection (April 1876)]. Courtesy of the
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, California.

Figure 8………...158
“O.W.” by Linley Sambourne [from Punch (June 1881)]

Figure 9………...162
“Oscar Dear!” [from the Oscar Wilde Collection (1882)]. Courtesy of the William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, California.

Figure 10……….172
Photograph of Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony [from the Oscar Wilde Collection
(1882)]. Courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles,
California.

Figure 11………..173
A collectible card of Oscar Wilde issued by Napoleon Sarony [from the Oscar Wilde
Collection (1882)]. Courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los
Angeles, California.

Figure 12………..174
Photograph of Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony [from the Oscar Wilde Collection
(1882)]. Courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles,
California.
vii

Figure 13…………176
A sketch of Oscar Wilde by James Edward Kelly [from the Oscar Wilde Collection
(1882)]. Courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles,
California.

Figure 14………….179
Illustration of Oscar Wilde in The Judge [from the Oscar Wilde Collection (September
1883)]. Courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles,
California.

Figure 15…………..180
Illustration of Oscar Wilde in The Entre’acte [from the Oscar Wilde Collection
(September 1883)]. Courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los
Angeles, California.
1

INTRODUCTION
“Celebrity is everywhere acknowledged but never understood.” –Fred Inglis1
In 1812, following the publication of the first part of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,
Lord Byron was said to have awoken one morning to find himself a famous man.2 The
poem, a combination of Byron’s travels and his infamous personality, was something of a
self-portrait, if not an artistic representation by which Byron sought to be known. What
followed could only be described as Byromania, a term that Byron’s future wife,
Annabella Milbanke, coined to describe the “’mass hysteria’” that ensued around him
(McDayter 2). Flooded with fan letters and greeted with the screams and shrieks of
enthusiastic admirers, Byron became an object of desire and a subject of intense interest
to a public who knew him only through his fictive, semi-biographical poetry.3 The fame
to which he awoke was indeed unparalleled thus far in its scope and nature, particularly
for a literary figure. Prior to Byromania, legitimate fame had generally been reserved for
those figures of authority whose power derived primarily from politics, religion, royalty,
or warfare. While writers had often been granted some form of public recognition, they
did not have the clout, connections, or authority to be idolized by the general public. This
dynamic considerably changed with the social and political upheavals of the French
Revolution in the late eighteenth century with the simultaneous decline of monarchial
power and the rise of the middle class. The “waning influence of established civil

1
 From Inglis’ A Short History of Celebrity 4.

2 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published between1812-18.

3 McDayter explains that “[Byron’s] every social activity was recorded and he became the most sought-
after guest at the tables of the rich and famous. Women fainted upon meeting him (actually, we know of
only one confirmed case, but history has embellished the myth) . . . [and] men envied him” (3).
2

authorities and a persistence of class struggle led to the rise of a new host of public
figures—military men, scientists, authors—who gained fame differently than they might
have in the past” (Shires 199). While Byromania was certainly a product of these new
conditions, it was also intensified by the poet’s “reluctance to create a recognizable
divide between his life in history and his life in art” (McDayter 2). By composing Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage and other major works around his authorial persona, Byron
unwittingly played a major role in revising the conditions and responsibilities of
authorship. The Byromania he inspired became unequivocally tied to the public's
increasing desire to scrutinize and consume the author beyond the pages of the text as
well as to the new market demands for the commercialized, if not commoditized, author.
I open with Byron here specifically because his fame, as it was externalized in the
Byromania phenomenon, significantly impacted the trajectory and nature of Victorian
and Antebellum authorship by creating new ideological frames through which these
writers would operate. By signaling that the profession of literary authorship was now
linked to a developing celebrity sphere, Byron’s renown became a new model of
popularity and literary fame, and a standard of success that Victorian and Antebellum
writers would strive to recreate and achieve in their own literary careers.
My dissertation takes as its subject the writers who directly succeeded Byron and
his contemporaries. It is a study of how the nature of the authorial celebrity developed
within the Victorian and Antebellum periods, and more specifically, of the structural,
cultural, and social forces that helped to develop and sustain celebrity culture within the
literary realm at this time. While the modern authorial celebrity may have emerged in the
Romantic period with Byron’s staggering fame, the Romantic celebrity is absent from my